Jung Sung-il's Cafe Noir is one of the most remarkable experiences that I have ever been lucky enough to catch all year and the obscurity of such a beautiful film is only something truly saddening to hear. At a length going a little above three hours there's never a dull moment within this slice of life for instead in all the slow moments some of the most beautifully touching pieces of cinema to have come out from this century. Something so simple and so tender, but so bizarre - it would be easy to say Cafe Noir has everything and maybe that is perhaps what it is.

This is unquestionably one of the greatest pieces of cinema ever produced. I had this playing in the background while I write a paper about a completely different film and wound up watching it and not getting any of my paper done.

It seems fitting that director Jung Sung-il is also a well-known film critic and professor in South Korea, as this, his debut, often struck me as resembling nothing so much as the longest and possibly most ambitious student film ever made, both for better and for worse. I don't mean that to be as much of an insult as it probably reads, for while the film is certainly self-indulgent, precious, overly mannered, and occasionally ponderous, it is in equal measures endearing and admirable. It is both frustrating and grand, and not necessarily in ways that are mutually exclusive. Both the film's strengths and its weaknesses feel deeply intertwined.

Jeong Seong-il's only film (thus far) is an unknown masterpiece. Both poetic and realist in it's construction, it's ultimately one of the most romantic films I have ever seen about isolation and longing. That it also makes reference to so many other filmmakers who's work I admire in ways that are intriguing and yet totally of a piece with the rest of it make me love it even more so.

I first saw this film just over two years ago at the time of this writing and I loved it then. Re-watching it again now, having seen even more films and growing as a person and all that stuff, my opinion of it has only grown stronger. While certain scenes…

It seems fitting that director Jung Sung-il is also a well-known film critic and professor in South Korea, as this, his debut, often struck me as resembling nothing so much as the longest and possibly most ambitious student film ever made, both for better and for worse. I don't mean that to be as much of an insult as it probably reads, for while the film is certainly self-indulgent, precious, overly mannered, and occasionally ponderous, it is in equal measures endearing and admirable. It is both frustrating and grand, and not necessarily in ways that are mutually exclusive. Both the film's strengths and its weaknesses feel deeply intertwined.

i think jung sung-il is probably happy his film is a total of victim of highbrow arthouse sensibilities but boi can it be cloying. there's a scene where the protagonist (young-soo) is forced to play schumann on the piano for his mistress's husband, cut to a shot of several school children listening to him, all meticulously positioned on the nearby staircase as unnaturally as possible, only for the scene to climax with the husband quoting brecht or something. not to mention preteen girls standing on rooftops and quoting dostoevsky moments prior to this. obviously realism isn't the intended venture here but a checklist of bougie european culture as a method of creating "cerebral drama" as of 2009 is dated but…

It's hard to talk about what exactly it is that stands out about this film, when pretty much every single aspect of it manages to do so. I love Asian cinema, and I have seen quite a few Korean films in my days, but none that I can compare to Cafe Noir. The influence from the French New Wave is evident in almost every single scene.

The film is about 3 hours and 20 minutes, which really makes it feel uneven at times. Some scenes are brilliant, while others feel completely forgettable. Even so, the film managed to keep my interest the entire time, without ever feeling too slow.

Jung Sung-il's Cafe Noir is one of the most remarkable experiences that I have ever been lucky enough to catch all year and the obscurity of such a beautiful film is only something truly saddening to hear. At a length going a little above three hours there's never a dull moment within this slice of life for instead in all the slow moments some of the most beautifully touching pieces of cinema to have come out from this century. Something so simple and so tender, but so bizarre - it would be easy to say Cafe Noir has everything and maybe that is perhaps what it is.